SearchTeria Partners with Ask Jeeves Japan

[Woz]

This press release [searchteria.co.jp] states that "Ask Jeeves Japan ~ and SearchTeria ~ have announced that they formed a partnership that allows SearchTeria to place mobile paid listing ads in "Ask Mobile", Ask Jeeves Japan's mobile user service."

"SearchTeria's ad technology makes it possible to reach users that only access the Internet by mobile phone."

I'm just wondering how big the Mobile-Only Internet market is in Japan, and what affect this will have on both Ask Japan and the market in general.

Onya
Woz

[bill]

Interesting find Woz. I never knew Ask Japan had a mobile site. I just checked it out on my phone. It looks like a nice portal. I'll have to paly with it some more.

I'm just wondering how big the Mobile-Only Internet market is in Japan

As of April 2005, Japan's Telecommunications Carriers Association reports 87,435,300 subscribers to mobile phones, and out of that number, 75,592,900 have internet access on their phone. Just about every phone sold in Japan today has some form of Internet accessibility...whether everyone uses that service is another question though. A lot of people only use their phone for mail and games and don't ever get out into the net proper.

... and what affect this will have on both Ask Japan and the market in general.

That's tougher to say. Search on the mobile phone is not as popular as it is on the PC. It's more difficult to type in queries, and the SERPs often contain pages formatted for the PC. People usually prefer to follow links.

Most carriers in Japan charge by the packet, so surfing on your phone is not a popular pastime for everyone. Searching on your phone costs you money, and clicking on ads costs you money, so there is a certain amount of economy involved here. The user's sensitivity to banners and ads is heightened in this environment and there are far fewer click-throughs than on a PC.

Mobile users in Japan usually have a very limited number of sites they visit. The carriers, like NTT DoCoMo, have what is referred to as a walled garden of content for their users. This is a directory of sites for people to visit, all of which have been approved by the carrier. Ask Japan's mobile site is nowhere to be found on my DoCoMo phone's main directory list, so it's going to be very hard for anyone to find them. If you're not on the provider's main list of approved content, then traffic opportunities dramatically decrease.

At first glance I'd say this was a advertising opportunity in an under utilized medium on a fairly unknown mobile portal. I'll have to play with the Ask Mobile site a bit, but it looks like the info contained there is the same as that offered my the main carrier portals, so they're in for an uphill battle.